How do you lead systems within and outside your organization? As we are moving from the industrial age to the contextual age, we want to learn from systems and platform leaders around the world.
The mission of Deloitte’s Center for the Edge is to identify and explore emerging opportunities related to shifts that aren’t yet on the management agenda, but ought to be. The latest research initiative is a collaboration between Deloitte, BI Norwegian Business School and the Norwegian Research Council.
Initiated in 2022, the research project explores the edge of leadership and strategy, building on the rich body of Center for the Edge studies. John Hagel III, World Economic Forum co-chair on Platforms and Systems and co-founder of Deloitte Center for the Edge, is mentoring Ph.D. candidate and Deloitte Center for the Edge Director in Norway, Daniel Sunde-Hansen. The main supervisor is Jan Ketil Arnulf, Professor, BI, and the corporate supervisor is Johannes Wiik, Nordic Energy, Resources and Industrials Lead Partner.
Big shifts are changing society. Cultural and social shifts, digitization, global connectivity, increase in consumer power and the rise of a platform economy. We are moving from an industrial age to a contextual age, where the key to creating and capturing value will be through understanding the context of the end user, then pulling the appropriate resources, inside or outside the organization, to address the context. The distinction between inside and outside the organization is likely to be less clear or meaningful.
We need to look beyond traditional management theories where driving efficiency at scale is the explicit or implicit goal. One alternative could be systems leadership, where leadership and learning emerges through the interactions of employees, leaders, clients and third parties.
We want to learn from systems and platform leaders around the world, and we encourage anyone with thoughts on this research topic to connect with us – to share their ideas or get involved in the project.